Li Bufan followed the direction guided by Insight Flame, pressing onward. The fused white flame within his Spirit Sea kept leaping, each tremor like an invisible thread tugging his footsteps ever farther toward the northwest.
He could feel the temperature in the air gradually changing, shifting from dry and chilly to warm and gentle, as though an unseen current of warmth were slowly surging ahead.
At last, he stopped.
Ahead lay a broad clearing, at whose center countless tiny blue flames floated in the air.
They drifted slowly through the void, maintaining delicate distances from one another, as though performing a silent dance—graceful and unhurried.
Thus Have I Heard.
Li Bufan recognized those flames.
They were precisely the Thus Have I Heard Fire he had refined before. Yet back then, he had only hastily come into contact with a few wisps during his search; never had he stood before an entire sea of flame as he did now.
At that moment, the Insight Flame in his Spirit Sea trembled at an unprecedented frequency. Its throbbing carried an urgent longing, as if old friends long separated were calling out to one another across an immense distance.
He did not hesitate. Taking a deep breath, he stepped into the region filled with dancing blue flames.
But the instant he entered, a sudden change erupted.
The blue flames that had been leisurely floating through the air seemed to sense something. Like a startled school of fish, they abruptly changed direction and surged toward him.
Without pausing in the slightest, they streaked straight into his brow like blue streams of light, plunging directly into the depths of his Spirit Sea.
They rushed in so swiftly that he had no time to react before his Spirit Sea was filled with an icy blue radiance.
After